When The Lights Go Out
by Princess Pinky
Summary: The hands of time join together when the lights go out.


**A/N:** This is a very short ficlet inspired by some caps I made last night of the hand holding scenes in "Silence in the Library" and "Flesh and Stone."

_**When The Lights Go Out**_

"_Hey! Who turned out the lights?"_

"_Run!"_

_He knew who she was by then, even though it didn't make any sense and paradoxically, he still had no idea who she was. But in that moment, as the swarm in a spacesuit lugged towards them, he thrust out his hand and so did she, seemingly out of pure instinct. For a nanosecond, it surprised him the way his bare hand glided into her gloved one. They shouldn't have fit so perfectly, especially not with so much bulky material separating the two, but somehow, they did. And then they ran. They ran for the light as the shadows came, they ran from the darkness, they just ran!_

The Doctor awoke with a start. He didn't sleep that much, at least, compared to his typical human companions, he didn't sleep that much. Strangely, he'd managed to fall asleep in bed though. The lights were still on and his wife was asleep beside him. He rolled over and propped his head up with his arm and watched her. Something in the back of his mind – in a voice that sounded suspiciously like Amy's – told him that watching River sleep was creepy. He didn't listen.

She looked cliché. In other words, peaceful and all that humany wumany business, even though, technically, she wasn't human; not completely. She was, more or less, her own species. He liked her like that. She didn't always look so cliché though. Sometimes her past haunted her when she slept, but he never let on that she revealed that. He had decided that if she were to ever tell him the things he gave away in his sleep, he would feel overexposed, so he had silently chosen to keep that to himself.

His eyes meandered down to her hands, one of which was barely visible under her unruly curls, and the other was lying palm up, like Sleeping Beauty after she'd fallen from the poisonous prick of her finger. His hand ached to meld into hers, filling the crevices between her fingers with his own. He liked hand holding; hand holding was cool and always would be. But with River, it was different. They didn't just go around holding hands all the time, not like it had been with Rose. No, they held hands at certain times, that's what made it special.

"_The hull is breached and the power's failing."_

_It was so familiar. The lights were going out. The Angels were coming. And there they were again, her and him, working against the monsters and time to save her crew; trying to stay out of the shadows. He knew he didn't need to, he still didn't know her yet, but he reached out anyway and embraced her hand in the darkness. He felt her fingers tighten beneath his and he tightened his grip reassuringly._

"_Doctor, the lights!"_

The Doctor touched her wrist; her skin was warm and made the tips of his fingers feel cool by comparison, one might even say alien. He glided them over the bump of her thenar eminance and let them settle into the crater of her palm.

Her fingers twitched ever so faintly. "Doctor?" she mewled and her lashes began to flutter.

With his opposite hand, The Doctor removed his sonic screwdriver from the inner pocket of his tweed jacket. "Shh," he soothed. "Go back to sleep, River." He aimed the sonic at the lamp and it gave a sonic purr as the lights began to fade out.

River curled her fingers down, touching the tops of his knuckles with the crescent moons of her nails. "What are you doing?" she whispered, still half asleep.

The lights fell dark and The Doctor returned his sonic to his inner pocket, then cozied himself up beside his wife. He pushed his fingers between hers, joining them like timelines going in opposite directions, yet still firmly locked at their center.

"What is it about you and the shadows?" she asked and he imagined she was smiling in the darkness.

"What do you mean?"

"You only hold my hand when the lights go out."

"And I always will," he whispered. In the blackness, all he could feel was her hand, like an anchor on his hearts. "Whenever the shadows come, know that I'll be there. No matter how far away I am, I'll be there. Always. And we'll run. You just watch us run."


End file.
